By Scott Newman, 30 Jun 2017News

Granted, $610,000 plus on-roads it still an immense amount of money, however Maranello’s new V12 range-topper undercuts its F12 Berlinetta predecessor by more than $80,000.

Speaking to MOTOR at the 812’s Australian reveal in Melbourne, Ferrari Australasia CEO Herbert Appleroth explained the price cut: “What we started with the 458 Speciale is to take all the personalisation items out of the car that we chose on the customer’s behalf and give that money back to the client and allow them to choose what they want.

“So we started with the 458 Speciale, then the California T, the GTC4 Lusso and [the 812] is the last car as part of that re-pricing architecture. It’s a blank canvas that allows them to do whatever they want, so now they’ve got a fair amount of money that they’re able to then go and build their own special Ferrari rather than what we wanted for them.”

And spend it they do, with Appleroth saying he expects the average options spend on an 812 Superfast to be in excess of $100,000, higher than the average across-the-range spend of about $65,000.

The 812 Superfast is Ferrari’s most powerful regular production model ever, with a 6.5-litre V12 producing 588kW at 8500rpm and 718Nm at 7000rpm, pushing it to 100km/h in a claimed 2.9sec, 200km/h in 7.9sec and on to a top speed of over 340km/h.

It’s the first Ferrari with electronically-assisted power steering, which has allowed engineers to step up the electronic assistance systems, with V2.0 of the Virtual Short Wheelbase all-wheel steering first seen on the F12tdf and V5.0 of Side Slip Control introduced with the 458 Speciale.